Big Brains

In the last decade, there has been a mass migration of people into urban areas across the globe. This rapid urbanization has been increasingly unsustainable for our cities and it’s projected to get w…

If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Most people say they’d want to read minds. But Prof. Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business says you already have tha…

It’s been a historic week, with news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has officially opened an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

There’s no better expert to examine the recent events in…

The looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad became one of the defining moments of the second Iraq War. Christopher Woods, the director of the Oriental Institute, one of the world’s foremost…

One of the incredible perks of making a podcast at a place like the University of Chicago is the opportunity to feature some of the incredible guests who speak on our campus. 

This week, Supreme Cour…

Is it possible that having lunch with your friends is just as important in keeping you alive as exercising? That’s what University of Chicago professor Linda Waite is arguing. Her first of its kind r…

If you’ve played Candy Crush, flown on United Airlines, or taken an Uber or Lyft, you’ve been in one of Prof. John List’s experiments without even knowing it. List has revolutionized economics resear…

We're taking a summer break during July, but we'll be back in August with new episodes telling the stories of leading research with some of the world's greatest minds. During the break, we'll be brin…

Evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin spent six years in the Arctic searching for a fossil that could be a missing link between sea and land animals. Shubin shares the story behind his discovery of Tikt…

We're taking a summer break during July, but we'll be back in August with new episodes telling the stories of leading research with some of the world's greatest minds. During the break, we'll be brin…

If you want to better understand how Trump has forever changed the American presidency, the history of impeachment, or how to fix the dysfunction in our government, it’s best to go to an expert. Prof…

UChicago economist Raghuram Rajan became infamous for predicting the 2008 financial collapse three years before it happened.

Rajan says that there are three pillars in our society: the state, the mar…

The “birthers”, “Pizzagate”, anti-vaxxers. Since the election of Donald Trump, it’s seemed that belief in conspiracy theories is on the rise. At the same time, our polarization is worse than ever. Pe…

Doctor Valluvan Jeevanandam says that transplantation is a “spiritual journey.” One person’s tragic loss leads to the another’s second chance at life. But not all transplants are the same.

In 2018, p…

When dinosaur hunter and paleontologist Paul Sereno discovered an ancient mass gravesite in the sands of the Sahara, he knew he had to excavate and save that history and heritage.

Sereno has always s…

Since the late 1800s, if you were serious about studying biology you went to the Marine Biological Laboratory. The discoveries made there have led to world-changing applications in biology, medicine …

The development of artificial intelligence has begun to feel inevitable and promising. But University of Chicago computer scientist, Ben Zhao, has spent much of his career testing how the security of…

In her book Ghosts In The Schoolyard, University of Chicago scholar Eve Ewing asks a central question about the 2013 mass closings of Chicago Public Schools: If the schools were so bad, why did peop…

University of Chicago Professor Harold Pollack may be famous for his “financial index card”, but it’s his application of simple solutions to complex issues that’s reshaping how we tackle crime and he…

Every election year, poll after poll tries to predict where millennials stand politically. But Prof. Cathy Cohen of the University of Chicago says some of our assumptions about what issues matter to …